Why Does Jasypt Decryption Fail in Spring Boot? Common Causes & Fixes

After following a Spring Boot 2.x tutorial on encrypting configuration, some users encounter the following exception:

com.ulisesbocchio.jasyptspringboot.exception.DecryptionException: Unable to decrypt: ENC(...)
... (stack trace omitted for brevity) ...
org.jasypt.exceptions.EncryptionOperationNotPossibleException: null

The stack trace indicates that decryption failed.

Possible causes :

Cause 1: The encryption password used during encryption ( jasypt.encryptor.password) does not match the password supplied at runtime, leading to a mismatch between encryptor and decryptor.

Cause 2: The Unlimited Strength Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) is not installed. Without it, Jasypt cannot perform the required encryption operations.

Fix for Cause 2 :

Download the JCE policy files that correspond to your Java version from Oracle’s website (e.g., JCE 8).

Extract the archive; you will find README.txt, local_policy.jar, and US_export_policy.jar.

Copy local_policy.jar and US_export_policy.jar into $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security, overwriting the existing files.

After ensuring the passwords match and the Unlimited Strength JCE is installed, the decryption error should be resolved.